CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens' rights

Fascinating.

I do believe this is the first time a question like this has received a majority opinion saying the government is out of control.

Of course this would be the one poll that everyone in DC would ignore.

I wish all these panic-about-polls 'news' stories would include relevant information, such as the exact wording of the questions and how people were chosen for/excluded from the sample.

Of course, that might only serve to highlight how worthless these polls are.

The more government grows, the more liberty shrinks.

I've been saying it for years. I'm glad people are finally starting to wake up. Hope it's not too late.

Or maybe it's just the first time the truth has seen the light of day and is being reported?

Pretty much this times one thousand.

To give a reader full information might take too much time and be too complicated, to the point where the details no longer add value (there's the same ongoing debate in how much information is useful in a prospectus regarding the sale of securities).

But there is no doubt a few critical details that should always be provided, and without which the poll is not only useless, but probably is distorted to the point of being misleading (more than half of the time would be my guess, given the nature of people and their biases). That we don't insist on them is a blot upon the gatekeepers, in this case the whole institution of the press that reports the incomplete data.

Step 1: Get a bunch of people to run around yelling "the sky is falling, the sky is falling!"

Step 2: In the midst of your yelling, commission a poll to ask people if the sky is falling.

Step 3: Publish the results and say "See? A lot of people believe it, so it must be true!"

If you think your rights come from government, that government can also take your rights.

Of course it's true. It's always been true. Who the hell else is a threat to U.S. citizen rights? The Chinese?

A majority of idiots who answer polls.

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Normal person: Fuck you, I was just taking the KFC out of the bag, and you made me spill the fucking gravy! I hope you die in a fire!

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Idiot- Damned right I want to answer! You're going to get an earful! I also want the free pillow, hot towels, peanuts, little bottles of rum and vodka, and anything else I have coming! 9/11 was an inside job! NRA forever!

Correct me if I am wrong but isnt the government the one who gives us our rights to begin with?

I'll correct you: YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY WRONG.

Your rights exist prior to government. Government's function is to protect them.

Or do you believe that your right to free speech would suddenly evaporate if the government repealed the First Amendment? If the Founders had thought like that, we'd still be English subjects.

Government can bestow and take away privileges. It can even DENY rights. But it can't grant them. Rights are yours by virtue of your being a human being.

From whence?

God?

God's pretty fucking totalitarian.

Call it what you want. God. Nature. It doesn't matter. What matters is that human beings are and should be free, and that governments exists solely to protect that freedom.

If people aren't, and our freedoms are only what government tells us they are, then freedom is meaningless. You can't complain when government takes away your liberty because you've accepted it has the power to do it from the start.

I wonder who they voted for.

Sure I can, cuz I fucking feel like it.

Meh, it's just a FAUX noise poll. Oh wait!!!!

The only funny thing I ever heard Louie Anderson say is that everyone in the country should turn towards Washington DC and just start walking like zombies with a blank look on their faces. It'd be amazing to see how fast things change.

One of the disadvantages of a democracy or democratic republic is that the truth doesn't matter half so much as what people believe to be the truth.

If it suddenly came to be that come October 1, 60% of the people in the country got the mistaken notion that the sky was green and announced they wouldn't vote for anyone who believed otherwise, 100% of the candidates running would say the same thing for the next month.

I have no doubt plenty of people feel the government is broken, especially now that things are looking pretty shitty. But I still trust polls about as far as I can throw whoever came up with them. This article wasn't even nice enough to show us what the poll question was, and it didn't identify what the sample groups were. And since it's coming from CNN, I can't help but suspect an ulterior motive. To be fair, if it was MSNBC, I'd definitely think they were trolling in order to take a warped angle on this.

Are you willing to do something about it? Not just feel?

Of course the government is a threat to our rights. It's what governments do. Governments, like many things, desire to grow and as they do, they infringe on individual liberty. It is the responsibility of the people to check such growth and guard their liberty, but also to be responsible with it.

We've done a lousy job of protecting our freedoms and we've been lousy at being responsible with them. While I lay alot of blame at the doorstep of the government, I also lay an equal amount of blame at the doorsteps of us.

We're the ones who keep voting these clowns in and we're the ones who keep encouraging the politicians to infringe on our rights in the names of all our little pet causes.

Paladin uses the word government to denote an institution. Eightball uses the word government to denote a human activity. Problem solved.

Who ya gonna believe: Paladin or Titboy?

They're both right, for their respective use of the word. The institution that is called government does not create rights. But humans only have rights by virtue of engaging in the activity of government. That's why the founding fathers' actions to limit the power of the institution called government are indeed actions of government.

Philosophy creates rights.

Government enforces them.

If you are very, very lucky in where you are born.

No. Government protects rights, it doesn't [/i]enforce[/i] them.

Or at least, that's how it's supposed to work.

Silly semantical argument.

If it doesn't enforce the rights granted to people, how the hell could it possibly protect them?

Laws that aren't enforced don't exist for all practical purposes.

Oh, cut to the chase, where do you want the bullets to go?
I'll letcha know if I feel the particular murder is worth it.

Who said anything about bullets? Our problems with our government can be solved without firing a shot.